


When Your Line is Crossed

by LadyMaigrey



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (sort of kind of you'll see what I mean), F/M, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Public Masturbation, Voyeurism, frustration and fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMaigrey/pseuds/LadyMaigrey
Summary: Everything is fine, everything is perfectly functional at Nelson, Murdock & Page. And friendly. And warm. Sometimes awkward and suggestive, but fine.And Karen would burst from the sheer frustration of it all, if she would allow herself to think about it.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25





	When Your Line is Crossed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Notawriterjustalurker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notawriterjustalurker/gifts), [wawalux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wawalux/gifts).



> This was an idea that I had to exorcise out of my brain because it was rattling around there too long and it just wouldn't leave otherwise. I am inflicting it on two wonderful members, writers and artists of the Tumblr's Karedevil Squad - [NotAWriterJustALurker](https://notawriterjustalurker.tumblr.com/) and [WawaluxThings](https://wawaluxthings.tumblr.com/), because... well, cause I can and I love them (and cause I know they'll forgive me :) )
> 
> Inspiration, title and lyrics from Halestorm's very suggestive "I Get Off"

_So much left unspoken_

_Between the two of us_

_It’s so much more exciting_

_To look when you can touch_

_You could say I’m different_

_And maybe I’m a freak_

_But I know how to twist ya_

_To bring you to your knees_

* * *

“It’s late. You should head home. If you, um, are heading home” -- Matt’s fingers landed on his tie again, completing the fidgeting circuit – from his pen, to the cord of his earbuds, to the tie. He pushed his chair back and unfolded himself from behind his desk -- “Ah, I think we’ve done enough for today, for Mr Kowalski’s case.”

Click of the laptop lid, a brief fuss with his briefcase, and his fingers now pulled at the suit jacket draped over the chair’s back, its lapels crumpled from fighting against his weight all day. He shrugged it on; smoothed his tie again into the same not-quite-straightness it was already in.

Karen stayed sitting, elbow by her laptop on the “visitor’s” side of Matt’s desk, watching the nightly play where grace, power and awkwardness vied for top billing.

Matt touched his glasses, grasped the earpiece, and dropped his hand again.

“I gotta go.” His head tilted towards the door, as if she was holding his body back.

“Stay safe tonight, Matt.” As routine as a morning’s greeting.

He nodded, took a step towards the exit as if her words had untied the knot.

“You too, Karen.”

Ritual completed, the door closed behind him.

She leaned back in her chair, stretched her legs out towards the centre of the room, contemplated her beige pumps and the tiny scratches marring their fronts. The heels looked even worse. She should be wearing jeans and sneakers now, instead of these slip-ons that were neither elegant enough for a firm’s partner, nor practical enough for a PI. (Jeans and boots would be even better, given that the weather will soon be producing chilly puddles of mud and refuse on the sidewalks. Seriously, Jessica Jones was onto something with her never-changing wardrobe. But Jessica Jones always came across as being more aggressively comfortable in her skin than Karen ever felt. Then again, Karen wasn’t born yesterday, she had worn and evolved and shed many skins, and knew that armour didn’t always involve leather or Kevlar. Sometimes, a hoodie and a raincoat were all that one had or needed or could stand. Sometimes, a pair of pumps was just a step somewhere.)

Tonight, there was no need to be somewhere other than home, as Matt had so astutely assumed. Karen briefly contemplated chasing down a contact of hers that might be of help with the case, but Matt was right, there was no rush here. None of her other cases begged for immediate attention either. She had none to give, anyway. She was tired, feeling both jittery under her skin and listless at every idea that could alleviate the crawling tension. Work and daylight, jokes and questions and phone calls could distract her enough during office hours, but when that faded, the nameless gnawing on her nerves resumed.

Well, she could probably name it, zero in on the cause, if she gave herself permission. Something about that sunny smile, the crinkle at the corners of his hidden eyes, the dishevelled dorkiness peaking out from behind the blood-tinged darkness - but she resolutely refused to give herself that permission.

So, back to home and Netflix and a bottle of cheap wine it was.

She glanced at the door of a bar she passed on her way. Off-work crowd drinking and chatting, doing their best to avoid their own mundanity. She contemplated going in, dangling the bait, picking up someone who looked distracting enough to sink her teeth into for a night. There would be plenty eager to take a nibble. It’s been a while since she’s done that - just satisfied an urge for its own sake – but a female with a publishing platform for her opinions was usually perceived as one threat too many. Now she didn’t have that platform but neither did she think her urge would be that easily satisfied.

So, she kept walking.

One block, two, three, up the steps, key in the door, up the staircase, and there. To stew in nothingness till tomorrow’s walk back to the office. To the smiles, the fidgeting and the flirtation that kept skipping over the line between easy and apprehensive.

Thankfully, there wasn’t that much of an evening left to waste on staring at a glass and at a screen. Eventually, she retired to her bedroom, to stare out the window at the static cut-glass shadows of an urban landscape. Looking for that one shadow that did shift and flit – a kiss of fluttering darkness over the fire-escape’s grating, impossible to see unless one expected it, or was particularly inclined to imagine.

And was she that inclined? Was she willing to let that cat out of the bag to claw through her brain? Her hand that stroked over her neck and down her chest, skimming through the parting of her bathrobe, seemed to indicate so. The crawling itch under her skin surfaced in goose-bumps, carrying the simmering frustration out with it.

This was ridiculous. This was her home, her body, her thoughts, and - if he intruded upon them, daily and nightly, with his awkward chivalry, his complacent yearning, his games of emotional hide and seek - then she was allowed to call him out on it.

In her mind, if nowhere else.

And, really, he wasn’t that subtle at all! A woman had a sense for these things: no need for a chemical splash of superpowers here, just the ordinary evolution of generations spent being cast as both predator and prey. Karen resented the implications of both, but she certainly noticed the tilts of the head and the flaring of his nostrils whenever she moved across the office. And the subtle warming and lingering of his fingers whenever she offered her elbow. And the suppressed grins. And the furrowing of his brow and fidgeting whenever she was agitated, be it because the subject of her investigation eluded her, or her menstruation was giving her cramps.

And the fluttering shadows outside her window whenever the night was clear and the smog not too thick. 

She was being watched, in every animal sense of the word, bar the literal.

Let him watch then!

She certainly felt no qualms about watching him. As far as she was concerned, her appreciative glances, flicking off his broad shoulders and the muscles of his ass, were far less invasive than his abilities.

She also had no qualms standing here, at the window, with the darkness of the bedroom hiding her from all who relied on their sight.

Her hand slipped lower now, down between her breasts, and further down to the fuzzy belt holding her robe together. She toyed with the simple knot, one finger threading into the centre of it, poking and prodding. Then her second hand joined, fingers working faster now, teasing the loops apart until the belt and the robe parted and slid off her with a decisive shrug of her shoulders.

She imagined herself being outlined in the window, not by the accidental rays of streetlights, but by the scent of her scrubbed skin and the humid warmth retained from her shower – a halo of gradually fading Fahrenheits. How clear would it be to him? Would he be able to sense the shift in her weight as she cocked her hip? Could he follow the movement of her hand as it returned to stroking her skin, from her collarbone to the sensitive centre of her right breast?

What would he do? Would he retreat? Did she overestimate the thrill of invisibility and invincibility that the mask granted him? Or did she underestimate the prudishness of his Catholic orphanage upbringing?

Or was he simply too much of a gentleman to take up even such an open invitation?

The memory of his lips, quirking up at her at inopportune moments, assured her that he was not leaving her roof. Not anytime soon.

Her fingers teased and circled, and her mind wandered to the shape of him – a black silhouette of matte against transparent darkness, the stubble-peppered triangle of his jaw and the hint of carmine plumpness above it - the only parts reflecting the scant light. He was crouched at the edge of the drop that led past her window, his powerful legs folded and knees splayed, a gloved hand palming the ground between them - anchoring him, but twitching. A man forever balanced on a tightrope of conflicting desires, pulled slowly over the edge by another hand, far below him, that was also on its way down inch by seductive inch.

Karen could feel her skin glowing with heat set off by the roving of his senses as they delved over and into every exposed part, lighting them up in a spectrum only he could read and bask in. Sweat beaded up – a thousand tiny echoes of the drops of rain he had gathered on his finger just before his lips met hers. She imagined his tongue now licking those lips in futile eagerness, unable to dip and taste, while her own fingers slipped and slickened amongst the drops.

She watched his body fighting his command to remain still, to not interfere with the drinking of the cocktail of scents and sounds that she was exuding. His head twitched at the low moan she released when she stroked at the closed folds between her legs – once, twice. She paused and thought him shifting in response, the muscles in his thighs trembling, not from effort, but from the desire to move - to find more friction, or release, where he was now uncomfortably full.

She stroked again, just parting herself with the tip of her finger, staying slow and light, stoking her arousal on just the right side of control.

Control that was rapidly unravelling from Matt, stripped from him with her every motion, tipping him forward, curling him up on the centre of his need. His hand abandoned its futile post on the ground, palmed where he wanted to touch, became an anchor of a different sort – but the stretch of the material across his crotch was as unforgiving as the distance between himself and the woman driving him mad with the sounds of her fingers sliding into her body.

He bit at his lip, his hips jerking into the pressing hand, his teeth bared and glinting. Then he was all motion: stripping off the gloves, fumbling with the button, the zip, the silk. The tails of his mask whipped forwards over his shoulder, a reminder to all that this was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen brought undone on his knees, with his cock in his hands, raining precum instead of blood on the roof before him.

She wanted to watch him longer, desperate and heaving, the tug of his hand over his length struggling to find a rhythm as if uncertain of whether he wanted this to last as long as she willed him to, or to be released from her whims in a burst of mortification. But her own urgency was building with the repeated sinking of her fingers, her own free hand grasped the windowsill, seeking solidity outside her body that began to lose its definition.

She watched him on the back of her eyelids, his breathing whistling through the teeth that once again trapped his bottom lip and were sinking into it with every outward jerk of his fist. She matched his strokes, though they were much too fast and too rough for her; but that was fine - in matching him she spurred him on. And she felt sorry for his flesh - the bleeding marks he castigated himself with - but then she had long accepted that the need to bleed ran in him as deep as the need to love.

She watched him - his neck bowed, the muscles under the black cloth stark in their outline, rippling with the rush of animal pleasure coursing through him - and willed him to cross the line which he’d been politely stalking for months, the line that she finally dragged him to in a tangle of debauchery and voyeurism. She willed him on with the thrust of her fingers and the grind of the heel of her hand, her pent-up frustration colliding with limb-melting affection, her bracing palm slipping in sweat upon the windowsill, her own release barred behind three hissed words, “Come on, Matt.”

And come he did. In thick lines pattering down on the roof above her window, rattling the glass with a growl of craving finally acknowledged and of hunger only briefly tampered, sparking the longed-for spasm inside her own body and washing out the image of him in a deluge of white light.

* * *

When her eyes opened, she found herself on her knees beneath the window, forehead sticky and itchy with cooling sweat and dust as she rested it against the wall. The rest of her felt just as out of place, with pins and needles peppering her legs and a severe cramp in her hand that made her break-out into hysterical giggles despite the pain. Even as a teenager, she hadn’t been _that_ energetic in her self-indulgences. Or that successful.

Maybe, she was getting too old for this. Although, who the hell thought _this_ was a good idea at any age? She giggled again and then scrabbled above her head, with the hand that still maintained a decent physical condition, until she grasped the windowsill and slowly pulled herself up. All the boring features of an urban landscape, framed by the angles of a rust-spotted fire-escape, greeted her still-blurry eyes. The geometric shadows were entirely still.

Karen sighed and forced herself to walk back into the bathroom that still bore the scent of steam from her shower. She needed another rinse, stat, before the torpor of the endorphin drop caused her to climb into her bed as is – a decision she was sure to regret in the morning. Among other things.

Then again, the warmth of the water rushing over her skin, smoothing out the goose-bumps of fatigue and kneading out her sore muscles, was just as lulling as the comforter on her bed. It seemed the height of unreasonableness and irresponsibility to remain standing, so she curled up under the spray, with her chin resting on her knees.

She wondered what Matt was doing. Was he working out his hunger for justice on the body of some dim-witted thug who had miscalculated his luck and the Devil’s watchfulness? Or was he, like her, back at home - choosing, for once, to get a decent night’s sleep before they faced another day of anaemic politeness and friendship full of longing?

They had revealed so much to each other; laying in the dust of an old crypt, they gave each other permission to peek under the covers of their armour and witness the bones. And neither had retreated in disgust or disillusionment; they were still here, still living their forgiveness of past lies. Why was this so hard then? This next revelation - that was so bleeding obvious they had to keep it from themselves so as not blurt it out to the other? Even if it went wrong, what could they now not forgive?

She watched the newly-born steam swirl and build into opalescent mist, leaving its raindrops on the walls, running down in rivulets. One caught her attention, and she tracked it down as it joined another, swelled and transformed, grew tiny tangents, created a path - its direction determined by gravity but still uniquely its own – their own. What would the whisper of their travel sound like if she could pick it out from the rush of the rain? What would they feel like, if she could sense every molecule of their being? She watched the drops, felt them run down her hair, over her closing eyes, down her arms, onto his fingers sliding up to meet them and help them entwine, like their hands, like their lips, like their lives…

* * *

_But you don’t know_

_But you can’t see_

_It’s what you forgive_

_Out here for me_

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry!
> 
> I promise, next thing I write will be less trashy :P


End file.
